The Brady Six
by Chelsea Oz
Summary: This is something I've been wanting to do. Have little secrets about the Brady's that only they would know. I was going to do ten but only came up with six, which is perfect with the number of kids. If I think of more, I will definitely update with six more each chapter. In the meantime, give chapter one a whirl and tell me what you think!
1. Chapter 1

1) The Honeymoon Sweet- Sure they were a crazy bunch. Why in their right minds would Mike and Carol bring along all their children on their honeymoon? Wouldn't they want to spend it alone, to be intimate? Truth is, they found a way. All the kids finally went to sleep around three in the morning. Little Cindy snuggled in between the newlyweds. Carol had reached over her daughter and grabbed her husband's hand while they, too had finally drifted off into a peaceful sleep. They woke up to each other still holding hands.

2) All Dogs (and cats) Go To Heaven- Fluffy was a tired old cat by the time Mike and Carol had wed. She stayed with Carol's mom and dad because they figured Tiger would do nothing but torture her. The girls got word of their beloved cat's death after the family's first camping trip. Tiger would follow in just a few short years of natural causes, on the anniversary of Fluffy's death.

3) Photograph- Bobby did keep that picture of his mother. It was kept put away in the drawer. The night Carol had talked him out of running away on her, she crept into the boys room to check on him. Carol's heart broke as she caught a glimpse of Bobby crying into his mother's face in the frame.

"I'm sorry, baby," Carol whispered, choked with tears. Bobby never saw or heard Carol in that moment.

4) Daddy's Little Girl- Cindy also kept a picture of her daddy in a safe place and Mike never knew it. Kitty Karry-All had a little gold locket around her neck sometimes whenever Cindy felt like putting it on her.

"She wants to feel special today, daddy," little Cindy would say.

Mike thought nothing of it at the time. When Cindy became a teenager, he was helping Carol and Alice put away old things of hers when stumbled across her favorite doll with her locket mysteriously opened up. He saw there was a picture of a man holding a baby. He gasped when the locket stated: 2/17/63, Cindy's birthday. The baby in the picture was her and the man was her birth father.

5) Old Maid- Alice always felt stuck in her life. She always put on a happy face and sharp wit to try and hide it. Her only love in her adult life was Sam, the butcher who would rather give it up to his bowling ball most nights than her. She loved her job and the children but she yearned for a family of her own. She would look at Mrs. Brady with some jealousy. Carol was living the life had always wanted.

6) Some Will Win, Some Will Lose- Jealosuy was almost the name of the game when it came to Marcia and Jan's relationship. Jan was almost always vocal about her frustrations with being in her sister's shadow. Marcia would never admit that sometimes she was jealous of Jan. She never really knew how this came about, but Marcia always felt a pressure of being the golden girl from the time she could remember. Jan was allowed to fall on her face sometimes and she wasn't. Marcia often wondered how much freedom there was in having nothing to lose.


	2. Chapter 2

7) The House That Haunted Me- Peter suffered from night terrors ever since the day of his mother's funeral. They occured once or twice a week and it had taken a toll on both Peter and Mike, who would be awake half the night trying to comfort him. It wasn't until they moved to Clinton Avenue that they finally stopped. Mike was not one to believe in ghosts or spirits but he couldn't help but question the situtation sometimes.

8) Mall Rat- Greg gasped when he saw Marcia for the first time. It was not due to her beauty, althought there was no doubt she was a beautiful girl. It was because he realized that she was the little girl that got her hair pulled by him. She was with one of her friends standing in line to see Santa and so wasn't he. His friend ribbed him to do it on a double dog dare with the promise of a dollar. Greg couldn't refuse so he went through with it. People could here her screaming a mile away as Greg and his friend skidded off to the store next door. Greg never told her it was him, but he would always feel guilty about that.

9) Meat Man in the Santa Suit- The Brady's have always had a weird connection to Christmas. Even Sam Franklin couldn't get away from their Christmas curse and he was only the family's maid's lover. Years ago before he even started seeing Alice he was in big trouble financially. He just bought his meat shop and his first year wasn't a good one at all. It was hanging on by a prayer. To make ends meet that holiday season, he took a job at the department store as Santa Claus. He had two pictures that he kept over the years of that one desparate job, one of a boy on his knee and the other a girl. The boy was Peter Brady and the girl was Jan Martin.

10) Someday My Prince Will Come- The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs play was ridiculous. All that work with it being all their family, all their yard and all their time. Mike was pretty much resentful of it all and hoped that teacher of Cindy's appreciated it. He was so in the present for much of the day just trying to get through it all that he obviously never really stopped to look at Carol. It wasn't until he found a poloriod picture a few days later lying around the house. It was the scene where "Prince Charming" had to kiss "Snow White". He never realized how much Carol looked like his deceased wife with that dark wig on. He was so moved that he immeadiately went into the bathroom and wept.

11) Where art thou, Marcia?- Marcia had a diffucult time coming back to the play after volunteering to understudy the part of Juliet's mother. The other kids wanted nothing to do with her. She had treated them poorly and pretty much alienated everyone and she never realized it until they finally kicked her out. Right before she went on stage, she looked at herself in the mirror and saw herself clearly for the first time in a while.

"You deserve this," she said bitterly to her own reflection.

12) My Funny Valentine- Most husbands give their wives flowers for Valentine's, or maybe chocolate, but that was not Mike's way. Mike every year would give Carol a bottle of red wine and every year Carol would laugh about it. The kids never knew the story behind it until they were old enough. It was a reference to their first date where Carol had spilt red wine on herself. Mike said that when he knew he loved her, but he nor Carol of course would tell them the wine was spilt in Carol's cleavage!

***Author's Note: You like it so far? Yes, number 12 is a reference to my story "****_Scenes From an Italian Restaurant_****."**


	3. Chapter 3

13) He'll Show Up- Carol was hoping that her third child would be a boy. That wasn't to be as another baby girl was placed in her arms instead. She loved her little Cindy but couldn't get over her disappointment of not having a son to finally call her own.

"I want to keep trying until we have a boy," Carol confessed to her husband that last night in the hospital.

"That's crazy. We've got three beautiful girls to love. If you were meant to have a boy, he'll show up."

Carol thought it was weird that he said solely her and not him having a boy. She didn't press it any further; she just simply sighed and bit her tongue. His words would come back and haunt her not even a year later when he died in the car accident, then during her courtship with Mike, then engagement and then wedding day. It wasn't until she legally adopted Greg, Peter and Bobby did her late husband's voice ringing in her ears.

"If you were meant to have a boy in your life, he'll show up."

14) At The Hour Of Our Death- Bobby and Cindy seemed to know when their birth parent's deaths were about to occur. Around the time her father's car crashed, usually Cindy would be out for naptime. She was a good sleeper and would always manage to fall asleep on the dot. Not that day, she wailed to the top of her lungs for a good hour and Carol was flabbergasted by her uncharacteristic behavior. She rocked her, checked her diaper, and even gave her a bath, nothing worked. It wasn't until Carol got the phone call and began to wail herself did Cindy finally fall asleep.

Bobby on the other hand wasn't much of a sleepyhead when he was a baby. He often would be up hours at a time during the night just babbling away to himself. Both his parents agreed that at least he was happy during his awake hours and not crying. At two in the morning, Mike could have swore he'd heard Bobby say, "Mama, mama, mama." That was when he rolled over and beckoned for his wife to wake up. She wouldn't; he had called for her, nudged her until he finally realized how cold she was. All the while Bobby kept repeating, "Mama, mama, mama."

15) Go Ask Alice- It was true that Sam loved Alice. It was also true that Sam spent his life doing things that he loved. That's why he couldn't understand why Alice never realized that all the inane little things he would take her to were ways he was showing he loved her. He was proud of his meat business and made it a point to bring her every year that they were a-courting. Bowling was his favorite hobby and wanted desparately for Alice to be by his side and enjoying every minute of it like he did. During cousin Clara's elopement, Sam had an a-ha moment. He looked at Alice, back at his cousin, and then back at the justice of the peace. He realized that he had already chosen to live his life with Alice, why not make it official.

"Hey, Alice," Sam said on the way home. "I finally want to get married. Do you want to be my wife?"

"Oh, Sam," she replied breathless. "All you had to do was ask. Of course I want to be your wife!"

16) Like Father, Like Daughter- Jan didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life after high school. She knew she was going to college but had no idea what she would major in. She always liked art, was always good at art, she figured she would do something with that. That summer after graduation, she was studying her father's latest big project. He was putting the final touches on his model when Jan thought she'd take a look at his sketches and blueprints. She looked at those papers along with the final model and it all amazingly made sense to her.

"Hey, dad. I think your daughter would like to study arcitecture."

"You can study whatever you'd like, sweetheart," he replied with his heart silently expanding with pride.

17) The Lost Boy- Carol always seemed to worry about her middle daughter, especially in her teenage years. She felt her poor daughter was so self-critical of herself that she feared she would never quite get a grip on her life. That all changed once she went to college and she had blossomed. Carol couldn't help but thank God for her daughter's turn-around. That was when they worried about Peter. He began to become quite the party animal. He had plenty of girls, plenty of booze and plenty of ego. Peter had made it through college, Carol had no idea how he did it. Peter then went from one dead end job to another and one girl to another. Carol couldn't help but wonder if the middle child syndrome had struck again and under very different circumstances.

18) Father Of The Bride's Prophecy- The day of Marcia and Jan's double wedding was a whirlwind. Mike and Carol went to bed as early as they possibly could that night. What an emotionally charged yet draining day all at the same time. Mike had crawled into bed first and then Carol joined him after she got done washing the make-up off her face.

"You know," Mike piped up after Carol laid down. "I'm not really thrilled about Wally."

"How come?"

"He's fun."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? If you ask me, Phillip could use a little of a personality picker-upper."

"No, no, you don't understand. Wally's the kind of guy you want to have around when the good times roll, but there are definitely times when the bad seems to stick. That's when you begin to behave responsibly and take charge and I don't think Wally has that in him."

"...And you think Phillip does?"

"Yeah, I think so. Look, I'm not saying this to say Wally doesn't love Marcia, I'm sure he does, but I don't think he can take care of her the way Phillip can take care of Jan. If something were to happen, I know Phillip would show up and I don't think Wally has the mental toughness to do the same."

"Yeah, but Mike, we've known Phillip a lot longer than Wally. Wally's got plenty of time to prove you wrong."

"Perhaps that's it. Goodnight, sweetheart," he rolls over and pecks his wife on the lips. Carol may be right, but Wally just may be the guy he's already credited him for.


	4. Chapter 4

19) Say Something (I'm Giving Up On You)- Cindy's love for music hit her hard when she got into her teenage years. So much so that she wanted to work in a field that dealt with music. Even though she sang and danced with her brothers and sisters as a young girl, that was not the kind of career she was looking for. What she wanted was to work in radio and she hit herself up as a communications major in college.

There was, however, one thing holding her back: her lisp. Year after year she would never be quite able to shake it. She had worked with a speech pathologist in kindergarten who told Cindy and her mother that she would grow out of it in time with practice. It was obviously not the case and she again had to work with speech pathologists all through college. She managed to pass with a good work ethic and good grades even though all her recommended speech therapies failed her.

The only thing more disappointing than the lisp itself was the fact she couldn't find a job because of it. All her internships never landed her a steady job. Every job interview and every audition would end in failure her first year because they found her lisp annoying. It wasn't until Gary Greenburg saw something special in her and hired her on the spot.

"Even though I have a speech impediment?"

"You are a special person, Cindy. I'm not giving up on you."

20) Engines On- Looking back, Bobby thought to himself how inevitable it was that he would be a racecar driver. Even though it was grueling practice and risky business, he abosolutely loved being behind the wheel. It reminded him of being younger and always wanting to be on the go-kart course at the amusement park. That was the highlight of every single trip for him. He will never forget the shock on his parents faces as he announced he was so sure of this that he dropped out of college. He will also never forget the relief he had when they reluctantly gave him their blessing. He promised them that everything would be just fine and not to worry. That lasted a couple of years anyway.

21) New Year's Day- Greg and Nora found out that they were expecting right after their honeymoon.

"Am I a man or what?!" Greg asked, esctatic as he picked his wife up and hugged her.

"Hey, be careful," Nora warned. "You're a doctor. You know better than to do that."

"You're okay honey," Greg told her tenderly. "I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you."

They got married in October and they waited until Christmas to tell their families. Of course both sides were deliriously happy with the news. They were on cloud nine that whole week until Nora began to feel weak and then to her horror, began to bleed. She was rushed to the hospital on her New Year's Day off when the doctor, a friend of Greg and Nora's, gave them good news and bad news. The good news? They still had a baby. The bad news, the gut-wrenching news? They lost two. Nora was actually expecting triplet boys and she never knew it until she lost the twins that one horrible New Year's Day.

22) Please, Don't Leave Me- It wasn't actually Phillip that wanted the divorce that horrible Christmastime of '88. Yes, he was busy working on a project that took up a lot of time, but this was a make him or break him project. This was something that was going to advance him further in his career and if he could pull it off, they could finally afford a better home. He was working his butt off for them and Jan couldn't realize it. He was blindsided when she decided it was best that maybe they weren't together anymore.

"You're never home," Jan had said.

"You knew well when I signed up for this job that it would mean sacrificing "us" time."

"Everytime you sign up for a new project it keeps getting worse! Granted, I work long hours, too but goodness I still try to be here for you."

"I know you do."

"Well how come when you come home and I'm laying on the couch with nothing on but panties and a smile do you not look up at me?"

"Maybe you're right," he finally told her, giving up. He figured that maybe if she really couldn't understand why he was doing what he was doing, then he deserved better. Even though it broke his heart and he was bitter that Jan, the one who wanted to call off their marriage, wanted him to fake a happy life for her family that Christmas. If hindsight is 20/20, than he could see that Jan was extending an olive branch and she was ready to fix what was broken. He ended up getting the best present ever that Christmas: His wife did indeed come back to him.

23) Never Say Never- Most people would never know it, but the Watergate scandal had upset Mike terribly. Even more horrible to him than the day JFK died and that was pretty brutal. It was unfathomable to him that a man who had been hired to carry and protect the country had lied and cheated to everyone.

"You are too a crook," Mike had responded back to the t.v after Nixon had made his famous remark.

"Mike," Carol said, who was by his side and rubbing his arm. "You're really upset over this aren't you?"

"He's a liar and he's a cheat," Mike replied, almost red in the face. "I am done with politics."

"You don't mean that," Carol said in a matter-of-fact way.

"I swear on my first wife's grave!"

He then uncharacteristically pounded on the family room table and walked over to the window. Carol got up and followed him over to the window with tears in her eyes. She had never seen him so angry and had never heard him refer to his first wife that way. She was scared but knew she couldn't hide from him either. He felt horrible as he looked at his wife with tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Come here, baby," he said, taking her into his arms and kissing her cheek. "I'm so sorry."

He thought about that hug and kiss as he embraced her on the night he won the Mayor's seat.

24) I Never Promised You A Rose Garden- Everybody seems to love a rose. Everybody except Alice Nelson. They resembled mourning to her. Her own mother's favorite flower was a pink rose. Alice was in the garden one day as a young girl, helping her prune the rosebushes as her mother collapsed and died before her. As tragic as that death was, it didn't stop Alice from gardening and roses didn't really mean anything to her until the first Mrs. Brady. She loved the red ones and would plant them every spring in her garden. The last spring of her life, she had decided that she didn't feel like gardening this year.

"I'll take over, I love to garden," Alice had offered.

"No, no, don't bother. You do so much for us already."

"I really wouldn't mind. Is there a particular flower you like?"

"Well, I do like red roses," she confessed, giving in.

"I'll get right to it."

It wasn't until later that month in May that Alice began to feel weird about tending roses again. Her bad feeling were confirmed later night when she had a premonition of her mother. Her mother told her that Mrs. Brady would not live to see her roses bloom. Alice prayed it was another meaningless bad dream until she got a phone call from Mr. Brady confirming what Alice's mother already told her.


	5. Chapter 5

***Author's Note: I could only come up with 4 tonight. I thought of ****_Lover's Delight_**** and along came the other three. I think that's better than having four good ones and two mediocre ones.**

25) Lover's Delight- Phillip, Jan, Wally and Marcia had spent their first anniversary with each other. All four went to a fancy French restaurant of Phillip's choosing. Wally wasn't particularly happy with the fancy setting; he was more of a diner guy. He bit his tongue and went with it. He was slowly getting better at dealing with Phillip's uptight, high maintenance ways. He also thought about Marcia and how she would probably like something fancy for her first anniversary, too.

The dinner went as smooth as the red wine they had chosen for their chateau brian dinner. It was a perfect medium-rare piece of beef with frites (french fries).

"Let's skip dessert," Jan blurted out.

"Why, sweetheart?" Phillip asked, rather stunned. "You love the creme brulee everytime we come here."

"I want ice cream," was all she had to say for Marcia's face to light up.

"Haskell's!" They blurted at the same time as their husbands just sat there wondering what the new ice cream fuss was all about. Marcia and Jan told them everything about the place and their crazy employment in the half an hour it took them to get there. Nothing had changed in the old Haskell place except for the man behind the counter; Mr. Haskell passed away during Jan's freshman year of college.

"Oh my God!" Marcia exclaimed.

"What?" Jan asked, looking in the direction Marcia was pointing. She laughed when she read that week's sundae special: The Lover's Delight. All four ended up getting one. The strawberry-vanilla-marshmallow sundae still tasted as good as it always had and once again, the treat was on Marcia.

26) She's Got A Way- Wally loved Marcia; it didn't take a genius to notice. As time went by with their marriage, the birth of their children and his on-going battle with employment he began to doubt himself. He looked through some of Marcia's old yearbooks and saw what a special girl she was. He was always taken aback by the boy's well wishes and all the hearts circled around boys she liked or had dated. All those good looking guys and he figured he was just a hairy guy. He couldn't help but feel bad when she walked into the room sometimes. He believed she had deserved better but he could never tell her. At his worst times, he would be cold and distant and Marcia would always wonder and wish he could tell her why.

27) When A Man Loves A Woman- That whole period when her family lost their home and they had to move back in with their parents was an embarrassing time for Marcia. Her husband completely lost his self-esteem and the kids looked more and more to their grandmother for maternal reassurance. Marcia was scared out of her mind that she was losing everything, even her grace which was proven in her alcoholic period. It was during the days of her alcoholism that she was secretly planning on getting a job, taking the kids out of her parent's house, and divorcing Wally. She secretly blamed him for the situation they were in. It wasn't until the day she admitted her alcohol problem did she see how much Wally meant to her. The fact that he was bound and determined to go through hell and back to be with her made her realize what she could have lost.

28) Wedding Night Heartbreak- Jan hadn't felt good that whole week right before her wedding. She blamed it on nerves or PMS but there was something more to it than that. Something told her to go get a pregnancy test, so she did and there was a big, pink postive sign for pregnant. She had to conceal it for now and she would wait until after their honeymoon was over. She began to feel better and better everyday after she found out and she was absolutely radiant on her wedding day. That night was a different story. They got back to their hotel room and she began to feel cramping. Jan got herself to the bathroom where she found out that she was indeed having a miscarriage.

"Oh my God," she whispered to herself. "What am I going to do?"

By the grace of God, she heard Phillip snore. He was so exhausted he fell asleep. Jan spent the better part of her wedding night weeping on the toilet.


End file.
